We make plans, and God laughs!

We make plans, and God laughs!

Working on going to Africa this summer, but have had to shift my plans!  I am going to go between June and August 1st, instead of through October.

I am still doing the oral history project for CENSUDI, a women's and girls development in northern Ghana, as planned.  I am still working on the partnership between Africa Bound, the Gage Center and Censudi with high school girls this summer.  That expansion of the Girl's Ambassador project with Africa Bound will happen.  It will still set up this summer.  I am still traveling with a SUNY Oswego professor and developing a storytelling abroad class for SUNY students for next summer.  I am still taking a student intern with me to work on an Aids Education program with CENSUDI.  But I'm coming back in August of this year!  A shorter volunteer project than first planned!

 I will return next spring to finish the oral history project. Staff at Censudi will follow-through with skypes and connections with girls in Syracuse, from October to May.  Girls will still travel with Africa Bound to Bolgatanga in the summer of 2014.  Girls from Bolgatanga will still visit in May.
The integrity of the projects I am working on will hold.

But...I have some important opportunities here in the States that I need to focus on in the fall.
I have an opportunity to manage and story tell in an ongoing storytelling space at Shoppingtown Mall, and to be a part of a web-casting project for that space.  I also have an opportunity to work on a t.v. show on the prop side of the production team.  I have been offered the opportunity to help develop and be in a production with a storyteller that I have always wanted to work with!  I have the opportunity to take the class that I am helping to develop with the professor at SUNY Oswego. 

It seemed that when I was ready to move away from Syracuse, feeling that all my opportunities to grow had been played out, the flood-gates opened.  God seems to have another plan for me.

Now the issue is this apartment - still let it go? Sell everything?  And live where in the fall?  And....how to keep it for the summer?  Oh boy!

So, I will return in the Fall and keep re-evaluating things.  Who know where all this will lead!  I will go to Africa again in May of 2014, and then see if I will come back in August or stay for a while.  Meanwhile, I will continue my volunteer work with CENSUDI and developing bridges from Upstate NY to Bolgatanga!

Ashe!

Letting go....

I am struggling with material possessions!  Stuff.  I own a lot of stuff, and it owns me!  Things that are markers in this 55 years of life on the planet.  Things that remind me of Adventures and Sorrows.  Of Triumphs and Failures.  Of Love and Scoundrels! (LOL) Things that have acted as markers in documenting my life.  It is hard to think of letting them go. And I need to let go of all of this stuff that I own in order to embrace future Adventures!  I have to think of living differently, and in living differently think differently about stuff!

I can't afford to store everything that I own, for a year, while I volunteer with CENCUDI in Northern Ghana!  So...I need to get rid of stuff!  I fb'd my friend Maureen Sieh, who just completed 2 years with the Peace Corp in Morocco.  She is still there, working with a NGO on a project involving Girls and media.  I asked her ...what did she do with all of her stuff?  She told me that she sold or gave away EVERY THING!  I asked, "Everything?"  "Yes...Everything!"  EVER SINGLE THING!

I had been thinking about all of this stuff that I own for a long time.  I have no children to pass "things" to.  This stuff will have no meaning, once I am gone.  Now, I have momentos and art that I have collected for years.  I have furniture that I have enjoyed for years; a sofa that was in my deceased parents house and an ottoman that my dad re-upholstered.  Gifts from friends and ex-boyfriends.  African masks and statues. Drawings and ceramics from school kids.  Photographs.  And lots of fabric, beads and buttons!  Stuff that I love! Get rid of everything?  Everything?

But Maureen gave me some wise advise.  You have enjoyed those items for years, and when you come back to the States, you can begin again...fresh!  Another friend said that I could take photos of the items I really love.  After all.....memories are in our mind and in our heart.   Not in stuff!
 
So...I prepare to give up everything!  Well, just about everything!  For Adventure!  I will keep 6 bins of stuff.  Art and momentos, mostly.  A lifetime of stuff in 6 bins!  A friend has agreed to store them in her basement.  I will sell as much as I can.  I need to fund this year of service.  I have to pay for my own food and personal items for the next year.  I need a plane ticket to come back to the States at the end of September through the middle of December and then back to Ghana.  (I have the money for my ticket there in Junte) I need to raise money for the transportation, lodging when I travel and petrol for the Oral History Project.  I want to do a quilt project with the Junior High Students that I will work with in Ghana. (Looking for grants too! and will do some fundraising!)  

As I look around my apartment, I see the potential funds for paying for this volunteer adventure!!!  In some ways, giving up EVERY THING will be a lifted burden.  It is unbelievable how much we accumilate in a lifetime!  And is it amazing how much we really can live without!  I have lived for months in Ghana, with my stuff in storage, and have not thought of one item in storage that I needed while there!  After months of not seeing my stuff, and opening boxes to move into a new apartment...so much of what I pull out of boxes I say "Oh, I forgot I had this!"

And so, I will sell EVERY THING! Almost every THING.  I will boil my life down to 6 bins.  I will find new owners for all this stuff!  I will take a deep breath, and unburden myself.  I will embrace the void, and fill in the space with this new ADVENTURE!  It is hard letting go.  But I am trying to get ready and look at it as not letting go but embracing the future.  And when it is all gone, I will be ready to go to Ghana and to serve.  Here's to letting go! 

New Year's Resolution

     I was reading old diaries and checking out past New Year Resolutions.  I reviewed annual promises to myself that I broke over and over again, year after year.  Exercise more, eat better, eat less, loose weight, write more, finish my college degree....the list goes on and on. 
     I got my first one in 6th grade at Fays Drug Store in Fairmount, New York.  I had failed a math test and was devestated.  I got a D!  I had never gotten a D before!  My mother was a take-action woman and, (after wiping my tears and snot with tissues and dinner) she took me to Fays Drug Store and bought me math flash cards, my first mechnical pencil, a protractor and my Diary first diary.  Red with gold lettering on the outside.  A flap with a brass lock and a tiny key.
     I still have that first Diary.  I sat in my home office and turned the fragil paper.  Each entry began faithfully with the words, "Dear Diary".  This worn red book was my secret keeper for several years.  It held the mondane - "Woke up, went to school, ate dinner, went to bed...." and my first loves (in secret code) - "Dear Diary, I love E.H."  My first death, (of my hamster Henly) was recorded there - "Poor Henly, he was all alone.  I came home from school and found him..."  There were adventures - "I am going on a three week canoe trip in the Adirondacks with the Girl Scout Council..." and raging anger..."I HATE HIM, I HATE HIM, I HATE...."  And forgiveness- "I don't hate him...I don't.  I love him."
     Since that first little red Diary, there has been a dark green one.  A larger pastel flowered journal.  (Journals were for high schoolers and grown folks)  A dark blue journal.  And now - this blog.  I don't write to my Diary everyday, like I used to.  And I forget this blog is here most of the time.  It is not as private as that first red Diary with the little brass lock; although I remember how my brother Wendell did find it once and taunted me by reading the words out-loud!  Also, now.. there are so many secrets I don't even share outloud with myself.  I hide them in the stories that I tell, the characters I bring to life in plays, the dreams that I fight through at night, and in the resolutions that I make with myself each and everyday;  so many still - unkept.
     And so, My New Year Resolutions for 2012.  "Dear Diary - I promise to write - something, anything - everyday.  I promise to work on finishing my college degree this year.  I promise to exercise more.  I promise to eat better....and to eat less.  I promise to loose weight........................"
    

"Mosi Village"

"Mosi Village" will be at the Syracuse Peace Council Plow Shares Arts and Crafts Festival December 3rd and 4th at Nottingham High School.  I will have story quilts, art dolls, Earth Women Pins and more for sale.  Oh and....BOOK WOMAN CLUB BOOKMARKS!!!!   You ask, yes I can hear you, what is Mosi Village?  It is the name that my friend Mardea Warner and I do our visual art under.

One night, in the early 1990's, I had this dream.  These people spoke to me.  Told me their story. Said they were Mosi...a people that I was connected to.  Ancestors.  They said that I just needed to know this.  Didn't need to do anything with it.  Just know.  At the time I had just settled on an African name for myself.  Re-naming myself.  I had tried out a name or two.  Nahila Nis Mosi for a while.  And then, Kephra Mosi was what I decided on.  Weird, huh!  I then named my business "Mosi Village" to go with the name of the people that had come to me in the dream.  I thought they weren't real.  Until a friend from the Ivory Coast saw my card and asked why I name my business "Mosi Village".  I told him about the dream and he told me that their was a real tribe named Mossi, sometimes spelled Mosi in northern Ghana and Burkina Faso!  Weirder, huh?  I did some research on this tribe and found out that they had ruled a portion of Ghana in Ghana's history.
Then I went to Africa in 1990...to Ghana.  Several of the women that I traveled with looked like the woman in the northern part of Ghana that we had traveled to.  In the Bolgatanga area.  The women there called them their sisters.  And so, as we traveled through Ghana, I kept looking for my face.  And asking elders, "Who do I look like?"  Three times, in different areas of the country I was told, "You should look for your people in Burkina Faso.  You look like you are from the Mossi People."  Yeah....Weird!

See you at Plow Shares...and Happy Thanksgiving!

"To boldly go where you have never gone before!"

     I have been a storyteller and a performer for over two decades now.  I have acted in many plays and have been in one musical.  I have performed and lectured at many Universities and Colleges across the country.  I have done numerous presentations for corporations, and I have performed at hundreds of community events.  I am always scared!  No matter how many prerformances I do, I am always scared before each and every one!  But nothing was as so unnerving as a reading that I did this past Saturday at the Women's Information Center on Allen Street in Syracuse, New York .  I WAS TERRIFIED!!!!!
     It was a wonderful event and I was honored to be asked to be a participant along with such talented writers as Wendy Gonyea, A. J. Bialo, Lorrie Sprecher and Akosua Y. Woods.  We were invited to read from our short stories, poetry, novels, plays...our written work.  Now, I don't write down the stories that I tell during performance.  They are forever works in progress.  They evolve and change with each telling.   Some voices more prominent this time in the telling, and then others more prominent in the next.  I love telling stories in the ancient oral tradition of the Griots that have told the life of the African Continent for centuries.  I think that it is my calling to tell stories.  I think that it is something that I am good at and could never think of living without this art of the spoken word.
     Now, I am also a writer.  I have written and produced several plays for children, and have in the past managed and directed plays for a children's theater group for five years.  My first adult play, "Doors" will be produced next fall in Syracuse and I am working on a new play for adult consumption.  I write and direct Murder Mystery Parties.  My favorite genre is short stories and I have a novel in the works.  (Tired my hand at poetry, but it's not my forte!)  I even have The Book Woman Club blog.  I have all this work on paper and thumb-drives...but I have never done a "reading".  The words of these works have either been performed by others, or have sat for years patiently and quietly on the pages of my notebooks, without hope, without thought, that they would ever be be spoken out-loud.  I've always dreamed of publishing some of these words, but I never ever thought about reading them out-loud to anyone besides the members of the writing group that I belong to, the G - Riot Writing Group.
     But, Saturday, I dusted off paper, wrapped my tongue around words and stood in front of a bunch of people, (most of them strangers), and read!  I felt inadequate, and self-conscious, and untalented, and awkward!  "What am I doing up here?" I kept thinking.  I felt naked.   You see, when I tell stories...that is another persona.  The storyteller "Vanessa".  She is creative, confident, knowledgeable, talented and well rehearsed.  She brings with her all of the tools of storytelling.  Voice, Space, Movement, Gestures, Facial Expressions, and Eye Contact!  (Actually, there are a bunch of  "Vanessa" s.  They all handle specific adventures in life.  We won't go into all of the "Vanessa"s here.  It would be a life-long story.)  The point is...that before Saturday there was no "reading" "Vanessa".  Now, I love new adventures.  I seek actively seek them out.  I am not a coward in my approach to life.  Which is why I said "yes" when I was asked to read.  But...like most of my adventures in life, I didn't think this one out.  I could tell you some stories!  (Not right now!)  I found myself breaking all of the rules of public presentation.  I rocked back and forth.  I hardly every took my face of the paper that I was reading from to make eye contact with the audience.  I kept crossing and uncrossing my feet.  I'm sure I mumbled.  (I don't think I picked my nose or scratched my butt!)  I read too fast.  I read too slow.  I wanted to drop through the floor in embarrassment! 
     I am so glad that amnesia is an option!  I'm already beginning to forget the details of my behavior during Saturday's reading.  The whole terrifying experience is conveniently fading into the memory file I call "mistakes".  What was I thinking when I said yes to doing a reading?  Will I ever do a reading again?  I don't know.  I want to say no, no way will I ever stand naked in front of a crowd again without my storytelling persona!  But, then, I do like challenges!  Since I was in 6th grade and did a report on Leonardo De Vince, I have embraced the idea of trying to be a Renaissance Woman!  I have always stove to be accomplished in as many things as possible in this lifetime! To give myself permission to do...everything!  (Star Trek music begins to softly plays in the background.)  To seek out new skills and new adventures!  To boldly go where I have never gone before!  (Music rises.)   Hey?  Isn't life an adventure?  (Black Out)

Imagine!

I will be doing a 20 minute story-tell at the Barnes and Nobel on Erie Boulevard in Syracuse, on Saturday November 19th sometime between 1:00 and 2:00 for an Imagine Syracuse Celebration.  I was just informed by Jesse Keating - the Ex.Director of Imagine that Bill Cosby will be there during the same time doing a book signing!  Awesome!  So - friends...come on by!  The Imagine Kids will be performing, I will tell stories and the one and only Mr. Bill Cosby will be there signing books for his book tour!!!!  Wow!

"Victoria"

I have changed the nature of the main character of my new play "Washing Hair".  She was too young, too unfocused, too flighty and too unsure of herself.  She was too much like the me that I used to be.  I didn't like her and did not want to write about her.   She was getting on my nerves.  And so I have rewritten her.    I began writing this play, this Victoria in the mid 90's.  I was so different then than I am now.  So, now, I made Victoria stronger, more directed, more reflective of her life.  I have to make sure that she is not too serious, that she has humor. My writing can be too morose, to dark and sad.  I want this play to have more laughter than the last play.  Since so much of my characters are made up of the shadows of myself...I guess I need to laugh at myself more.